


It Ain't Me Babe

by Aboutnothingness (Thesherlockholmes)



Category: Bohemian Rhapsody (Movie 2018), Queen (Band)
Genre: Dark fic, F/M, Gujarati and Persian make an appearance, Hurt No Comfort, I let myself do a song fic once and now there's no stopping me, Internal Monologue, Internalized Homophobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Zanzibar Revolution, please go listen to the song I beg of you, semi-graphic depictions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:11:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,453
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26410162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thesherlockholmes/pseuds/Aboutnothingness
Summary: His hands are shaking. They were shaking before, his eyes wet, his image scattered in silver mirrored image. Over the coverlet, trembling. Not a limb still, betraying distress. No one to see. No one to inquire. No one to protest to thinly in a shaking voice, pleading hands and innocent eyes.Freddie is having a bad night. Old memories and new worries entangle, but who's to know in the dark?
Relationships: Freddie Mercury/Rosemary Pearson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 13





	It Ain't Me Babe

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta BisexualRoger for approving of this... questionable piece of writing and listening to me rant about this song. 
> 
> Dear readers, enjoy and mind the tags. This is really rather dark—even by my standards!

_“You say you're looking for someone  
Who'll pick you up each time you fall.  
To gather flowers constantly  
An’ come each time you call.  
A lover for your life an’ nothing more.  
But it ain’t me babe.  
No, no, no it ain't me babe.  
It ain't me you’re lookin’ for, babe.”_  
— [It Ain’t Me Babe, Bob Dylan](https://youtu.be/xIjzvTObzgA)

\---

Somewhere outside cars pass by, a dog barks loud and rough. It’s night and Freddie has not fallen asleep. Rosemary is beside him. Why she is, he doesn’t know. She should have left—if she were anyone else, she would have left after what happened. The useless, miserable mistake that he as a being is: crying out of frustration in what should be the throes of passion.

He’s still crying now, small sniffles in the dark.

He’s not alone physically, but he feels it anyways. Alone. That’s how it’s always been. Left at school, no matter his pleading, his tears. They were wiped and he was scolded for it, made to get on the boat. He remembers the sea sickness and bile rises at the memory. Is it the memory or the thought of his failure as man?

_Pull yourself together, men don’t cry._

The one thing, _the one thing that he’s supposed to want_ , to need so viscerally and yet—nothing. It’s sharp inside him, this feeling. Alienation. _You are different_. He was different then, too. Small and quiet. Not prone to rough housing with the others, try as he might, _fit in_. Always crying at night. That’s not changed. Nothing has—not his manner, his speech—you’d think the beatings had taught him nothing of being a man.

They taught him a way of surviving, though. If being a good boy on your knees in the dust is survival. It was then, certainly. Hardly worse than ten or twenty lashes. He didn't bleed this way, only felt numb. As if he were a ghost. A child dead, but still walking. How the years past, slow, creeping day by day in the hot climate of India…

A memory made picturesque, a lie.

The feeling hasn’t left him. It follows him as a shadow. A thing he sees in the glint of a mirror, in his passing reflection in a shop window. The thing that wells up inside him at night, coming from the darkened corners, in from the door.

(The sharp shock of a scream, a man decapitated, echoing in the room.)

And then later, again, _different_.

Meeting Rosemary soon enough and joining in on the class jokes. Be it at his expense, never you mind—you’ll learn to give as good as you get.

Getting used to everything properly _English_ , a culture he should be prepared for, now surrounding him, overwhelming him. _More shocks, hold tight to an unsteady beam._

Steak and kidney pie at school on weekends, here it is nowhere to be found—a funny thing! But there are other things now, varying accents to be deciphered: northern and Irish, Rosemary supplies one day, when he’s worked up the courage to ask, feeling small and timid for the not-knowing. A culture to be parsed and to integrate into your every thought. A silly slip-up: using a word overheard but wrong, a reference entirely out of context. All revealing, and laughter going in rounds, people shaking their heads at, “Freddie baby”.

That's something sweet, though. He’s secretly pleased about being called ‘ _baby_ ’. Rosemary picks up, indulges him with a sweet smile, soft hands stroking his collarbone, his cheek. Same hands gentle on his hips, his buttocks.

_Easy on now, settle yourself, don’t think about it._

Soon enough, she sighs beside him, brushing her hair out of her face. An angel, a figure of Botticelli—that is the image. This shouldn't only be aesthetically pleasurable. A woman, right here. The sweat that dries too slowly.

He goes to the bathroom, Rosemary doesn't say a word.

Calm yourself, no tears. What is there to fuss about, only the feeling of uselessness? You’re used to that by now, aren't you? Should be. He looks strange in the night’s half-light. His face is hardly his own right now, his hands gentled by a woman's skin as soft as his own. Again, alien, but now only to himself. Cleaning himself of sweat and fluid. Is he ever clean? Was he ever clean?

( _Clean your face carefully now and remember about your hair_ : in the voice of a woman gone, age eight.)

The feeling creeping over him in the dark. Is there a context where _those things_ are not vile, are not–

You want what pains you? You want the boarding school whispers, the things done in the bogs, everything unspoken of? And here, now! You see everyone joking about it—you’ve concealed yourself even now, prevented them somehow from aiming droop-wrist jokes at you. But that’s a silly thought. After all, that is not you. Never. How could it be? A contestable thought that closes his throat and forces his eyes away from looking at himself in the mirror.

You are a vile thing, disgusting. You should be _shamed, shamed, shamed_. Hung on a rack, beaten—beat every last want out of you. Purify yourself with molten metal.

His hands are shaking. They were shaking before, his eyes wet, his image scattered in silver mirrored image. Over the coverlet, trembling. Not a limb still, betraying distress. No one to see. No one to inquire. No one to protest to thinly in a shaking voice, pleading hands and innocent eyes.

Innocent? You were never innocent.

માતા કૃપા કરીને! _(Mother please!)_

A language forgotten, a language foreign. A language never known.

An image in the shadows, an image of himself: teeth bared, a towering figure taunting ‘I can destroy you’, whispering ‘I hate you’. A history tangled in half frosted over memories, soon to be frozen in the past. Will you be wise enough to leave it all behind you?

 _Be a good boy and do your arithmetic—the sum of two parts produces an outcome, what you want never will add up; then it will only be you and you, two figures similar in every way. Dissolve the longing, there is nothing to explain it. There is no difference to_ this, _is there? Think it through—there is nothing different there, not fundamentally. It’s all the same, in the end. Yes, be a good boy and do your arithmetic, it’ll get you one of these days._

He curls up against Rosemary’s back. Here, he is _Protector_. Her hair tickles his chin, he moves away slightly—the smell of sex and perfume, soft girl skin, makes him nauseous.

 _Wanting, wanting, wanting_. You are never satisfied, a spoiled child, tutted at by your _ayah._ Remembering softly the words of a foreign tongue left far behind. Semi-comfort, semi-hurt. More pain than you can stand to call back into memory.

Put your worries to bed, many are dead. Never a scene spoken of, not by a soul; no one need know the horror. The trembling is what recalls it: dust roads; a body in the blood-soaked alley; testicles in death slack mouths; women limping, their bare thighs spotted red; abandoned horses braying, lame, their carrying carts overturned; soldiers dragging dead weight through mud. Looking out of his second-floor bedroom window, opening it only an inch minutes past midnight—hearing shouting, screams, rifle shots… seeing carnage, death only metres from himself.

Don’t scream, though you want to. You are no longer a boy.

A suitcase soon in hand. Many words, not of his knowing. One though… _mashuq, mashuq_. Some knew more than he could imagine. It settles him, slightly. A voice with no recognisable face, calling: _mashuq, mashuq_ —to a lost boy dead, or to a beloved; in anguish or in searching? Running in the race to a better land.

Quite the same now, you’ve done this before. Hide and then—escape!

Perhaps this isn’t the place to be, the woman to be with. Someone else... but how can you ever let such a gentle one go?

Rosemary humming high and lilting early in the evening, some song he didn’t recognise, eyes on his suggesting... almost pitying; like a mother already knowing what you’re going to say, knowing words you yourself haven’t thought of yet. A conclusion you aren't willing to admit, or even to consider.

And here you are: a man in bed, craving someone to lick your wounds, to wind their arms around you, to be the protected. A sad photograph, an image needing to be put to the ground and burned.

He hopes she isn't awoken by the tears dripping onto her neck or the whimpering to come in his dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments? Thoughts? Do tell me, dears!


End file.
